Wendy’s narrative nonfiction book, No Word for Welcome (University of Nebraska Press), won Grub Street's 2011 National Book Prize for Nonfiction and the 2012 International Latino Book Award for Best History / Political Book. No Word for Welcome explores how economic globalization intersects with village life in a region of southern Mexico called the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Grants from the arts commissions of Seattle, King County, and Washington State, as well as the Institute of Current World Affairs and Oberlin College Alumni Association, supported the research and writing of the book.

Her nonfiction writing and her translations (from Spanish) of poetry and fiction have appeared (or are forthcoming) in more than sixty magazines and literary journals, including Common-Place, Guernica, Michigan Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review online, NimrodInternational Journal, Orion, and Yes. In many publications her photographs accompany her writing. In 2012, with an Artist Support Residency from Seattle's Jack Straw Studios, Wendy recorded a trilingual audio CD of her English translations of poems with Zapotec-Mexican poet Irma Pineda.

She is currently on the faculty of Goddard College's low-residency BFA in Creative Writing program, based in Plainfield, Vermont. Wendy has also taught creative writing in venues including literary centers, writers' conferences, newsrooms in the United States and Mexico, public libraries, community centers, public high schools, city parks, and county jails. In 2008 she worked with a team of writers and publishing industry professionals to design Artist Trust's Literary EDGE program, a writers' professional development program that she co-taught until 2012.

Wendy has worked as a writer and editor since 2000. Before that, she devoted a decade to work for social change organizations in Boston and Seattle. She holds a BA in biology from Oberlin College and a MFA in writing and literature from the Bennington College Writing Seminars.

The daughter of a middle-school math teacher and a career Navy officer from rural Michigan, Wendy spent her childhood on and around military bases in Florida, Pennsylvania, southern California, and southern Maryland. She has lived in Seattle's Columbia City neighborhood since 2005.

"Call is never dry or academic; rather, she writes lively narrative, detailed description, and engaging scenes that render her subjects—a schoolteacher, fishermen, activists—three-dimensional. By relating the lives and concerns of isthmus dwellers and the struggles they face, the author raises awareness of globalization's effects on the village economy."
—Publishers Weekly review of No Word for Welcome
May 2, 2011